I've come across a strange issue. I've got some files on a DVD that I burned from Windows. I place the CD in my RHEL6 system it sees all of the files just fine. I load it up in the RHEL5 VM (VBox) it can't see the zip or folder from the zip but it can see the other folder. I open up the test VM of RHEL6 and it can't even mount the DVD. I look under /proc/filesystems and host RHEL6 has UDF, guest RHEL 5 has UDF and guest RHEL6 does not. UDF tools isn't installed on any of them. I've disabled SELinux and that didn't help and I can't find anything useful in the logs and, no, they are not hidden (ls -alhZ).

So, why am I not able to see files and what is stopping me from mounting the CD on some RHEL systems? The missing files is really weird, though. I can't think of anything that would make some files not visable.

Is this just a test or are you trying to get files to those VM's? If the latter, why not transfer over the network or use a ISO file?

VM's can make things... odd. RHEL5 & 6 handle can handle devices differently as well. How is the CD/DVD virtual device handled in your RHEL5 VM? And how is it in your RHEL6? Have you tried presenting it using a different virtual device method? A different device/driver could change things.

I could quite easily install the VMTools and map back a share, and I may just do that if I can't figure this out. I'm really perplexed, though. I've not seen anything like this before, where a system can only see some files.

I'll have to google up the different virtual device methods you mentioned and see if that has an impact.

Well, it was the multi-session that was the problem. I had tried finalizing the disk but that didn't help. Apparently, the man page for mount has a session flag you can specify, session=n. I've never seen that be an issue though. Heck, I didn't know that existed until now. I'm guessing RHEL5 wasn't picking up the newer session.

I was just wondering because I've NEVER seen anything like that. I didn't even know it was possible. But going through this exercise I learned a little bit about mounting multi-session disks and how they work.

JBI, since the system is not exactly a "normal" build they don't want it on the network. So I'd have to go through a spindle a month if I closed every session.

Actually, it was the built in Windows burner that I used. I've not had problems with it until now. My only issue with the Windows burning software is there is no way to finalize the disk with it. We have to use extra software to do that.